UDS-WG (Urban Data Science Working Group) at ACSP (The Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning)
Urban communities in the 21st Century have increasingly transitioned into complex systems and systems-of-systems, consisting of many dynamically interdependent human, environmental, and technical systems. Simultaneously, advances in Information Communication Technology have been accompanied by social innovations, which continues to drive the techno-centric versus human-centric debates. Rapid growth in urbanization and intensive urban-rural interaction enables massive flows of virtual and physical elements. At the same time, an increasing number of extreme weather-driven urban hazards are a significant source of biodiversity loss, social disruption, and economic disparity, threatening progress towards the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
The creation of UDS-WG at ACSP is proposed to collaboratively address key research questions on continued and emerging urban sustainability challenges. UDS-WG can be a convergence accelerator for the ACSP missions on Transformative Change, Innovative Teaching Models and Practices. UDS-WG will focus on the creation of sharable research and education models specifically for urban data science and applications. We will achieve the following goals: 1) Facilitate open access, sharing, and exchange of urban data science educational resources and curricula; 2) Promote responsible use of AI and big spatial data use in urban planning and studies, and facilitate the discussion on unlock the full potential of urban data science based on addressing data ethics and algorithm bias issues; 3) Integrate various educational activities and training resources under an easy-access web portal framework; 4) Nurture urban data science community in ACSP; and, 5) Minimize isolation and maximize cooperation in an active urban data science research and outreach network beyond ACSP.
UDS-WG is a collaborating efforts between ACSP and Texas A&M University